Another exhausting day. I mean it, exam prep is no joke. I woke up at 7:45 am, and I am writing this at 9:30 pm. Other than the one hour drive to Milan, the couple of breaks I took, including a short lunch and ten minutes here and there, I have been working nonstop. But I am happy to say in the past three days, I have written and revised a 5,000-word paper and taken and/or reviewed my notes for thirteen lectures on agricultural economics and food policy in developing countries. I am proud, and I am exhausted.
And this is only another small adventure in my exam odyssey. Tomorrow, Jesse and I are waking up at 6 am (ha! We’ll see if that happens) and making the twelve-hour drive to Belgium. We will stay in a hotel for one night. I will wake up by 7 am the next morning to head to my exam, which is a 40-minute walk from where we will be staying.
There is, of course, public transportation, and it will most definitely be raining—it is Belgium after all, but I insist on walking. I have always loved walking, and recently, the only walking I have been doing has been walking across the house any time I need to use the toilet. So walking will be good for me. I also find it calming. So pre-exam, it will be nice to have some time with my thoughts.
I spend twenty minutes in the morning journaling. I recently added taking seven minutes to journal at the end of the day as a mini reflection. Recently, both of these have been more of a brain dump of To-Do lists instead of genuine thoughts. I am doing the same here, at least the reflection part.
I am an intense person. A write a 5,000-word paper in one day kind of intense person. A drive 12 hours for an exam kind of intense person. And that is just the beginning. I can become very narrowly focused on pursuing my goals and forget to stop and look around me to see what is going on. It is helpful when I have tight deadlines, but it can make other times of my life feel stagnant. I hope to improve this, of course, this will be when this exam period is over. But by then, I will have likely moved onto another project.
There is always another project.
Jan 11, 2021 6:02 pm
There is ALWAYS another project, but this in itself is a project – Project You. Project Ariel. Or, as I’ll be calling it, Project Pacific, because that sounds like a super fun super cool secret spy thing <3 I'm looking forward to your year of writing. For real. And good luck with the exams! <3 All the best love!